Under the agreement, Pantech will provide its PG-3500 GSM handset to Bougues Telecom, one of the top three French mobile telecommunications service vendors. It is also negotiating deals with other French service operators and open market distributors, aiming to crack the top five handset suppliers in France by late 2008.

The 75-gram, 16.8-millimeter thick PG-3500 features a 1.3 megapixel camera, MPEG4 camcorder, and MP3 player supported by external memory. The phone is Bluetooth and Java-enabled and has a USB function, according to Pantech.

Last month, Pantech began shipments of 3G mobile phones to major German mobile service vendor E-plus, and agreed to supply GSM handsets to Glory Star, Vietnam’s second largest cellular phone retailer.

Pantech Group expects 2006 sales of 4.8 trillion won ($4.95 billion) through unit sales of 27 million handsets. $3 billion of that revenue is expected from overseas shipments of 22 to 23 million phones.